September 29, 2012

Wonderful Weaving Workshop

This year I pushed to have professional development for the elementary art teachers. My director was extremely supportive of the idea, and helped to make it happen with the powers that be. My friend Janet (yes...we do a lot of stuff together) & I brainstormed PD topics. All of which support our curriculum, and bring in aspects of our new text book adoption. I then found art teachers in our district to instruct. Janet & I are helping to lead several of them, but we've brought in other teachers from our district to lead as well. We are our own best resource...and it has been a joy to watch our peers lead & bring their own unique ideas to the workshops.

Janet & Mindy both have degrees in weaving/fabrics, and were the perfect choice for this workshop. I love weaving, and was confident in several of the things they were demonstrating. However...YOU CAN TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS!!!!!!!!!!!! I learned many!

This first image is not exactly weaving...it is braiding, but it is something I know my students will enjoy doing at some point!! The basic weaving with recycled materials was challenging, but fun. They showed us an easier way to do it, but I always make things hard on myself. It worked, but would probably go with the way they suggested if I were to do it with students.

You know I had to make a turtle weaving!!! This is made from felt. You can order large packs of felt for a good price. You'll need a rotary cutter & mat to make this easier on yourself!!! With a wood rod going from leg to leg...it gave it a wonderful support to be turned into a wall hanging.

The belt was made with a straw loom. I WAS ADDICTED!!!! I had never worked with a straw loom before...it was so much fun. The circle weaving is something I do with my 3rd graders every year....I love making them so much that I stayed through lunch working on it. ha ha

16 yrs in a district the size of ours...you develop great friendships with your peers...even if you don't get to see each other very often! When you do though...it is always a blast with much to talk about & laughs to share. I know how blessed we are here in MNPS to have so many art teachers, and to have the opportunities to get together for professional development. I wish I could have all you who find yourself the one and only...or one of few to come and be a part of our times together.

9 comments:

I love weaving too, though it is all self-taught. What kind of degree do you have?

I did straw weaving with kids a number of years back and something cool happened. I had a new 4th grade student - from Denmark - and he did not know one word of English. It was his first day, and he watched very carefully as I did my demo, including how to change colors. He quietly got to work, and every so often would get up, and closely examine the color wheel hanging on my board, and then gat back to work. By the time he was done, it was a wonderful rainbow weaving, all in color wheel order - a big success - without a single need for verbal communication. Such a nice boy, but unfortunately they moved away the next year, after he had become very comfortable and successful with us, and had learned a lot of English.

Networking is SO important, which is one reason why I'm loving seeing what everyone in the art blog community is up to - it gets you out of the 'rut' (which is so easy to hide in when you are the 'one and only') and opens up fresh ideas every day!

What a fun day! I have only taught paper weaving and cardboard loom yarn weaving. I would like to do that hula hoop class weaving and it is for sure on my bucket list. I am definitely going to try the one I saw on Pinterest that begins with a clay relief sculpture with evenly spaced holes so the weaving can be done in the middle of the fish or bird or whatever. If you do get a chance to write up some tutorials for what you learned from your PD day, I'd love to try some of them. Thanks, Ted!

This is so nice! How many elementary art teachers are there in your district? We have TWO. So, needless to say, our 'professional development' is usually pretty lame (or non-existant). Sometimes I self-develop... by reading a lot of blogs!

Mrs. Connell, we are very blessed to have over 90 elementary art teachers in Nashville Metro. We're a very large district..with over 70 elementary schools. Some of those elementary schools are 800+ students. In 1997 they made it mandatory to have at least one art teacher in every elementary school. 16 yrs later...still the case. Though..some have more challenging situations than others. One teacher has over 1000 students by her self. Sees them every 8 days.

Wow! I would love to be able to do something like that, but in my school district, I am the only elementary teacher (I have all 608 elementary kids in our district), but there is an art teacher at our jr/sr high school as well. My school is in rural northern Indiana, and there are only two school districts in my county, and each district has only one elementary.